Every little helps for our wildlife

Perhaps the biggest theme at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show was one of wild gardens and sustainability. Indeed, the winner of the Best Show Garden award was ‘A Rewilding Britain Landscape’, designed to represent an area in south-west England following the reintroduction of beavers to the wild. It was brilliantly executed by designers Lulu Urquhart and Adam Hunt with lots of clever planting. But you don’t need to create a Chelsea show garden, or indeed introduce beavers to your garden, to help wildlife and the environment. Simply by gardening at all – and cutting out chemicals – we create our own small ecosystems that hopefully get stronger year by year. In this issue, pollinator expert Jean Vernon tells us how we can really help our garden bees through summer (page 18) – with a few judicious plant choices we can make a big difference! I think that is the key – we don’t have to go overboard to really benefit our wildlife. Just by being gardeners we do more than we realise.

Elsewhere in this issue we look at some of the best summer salad plants to grow (page 22) and there’s a reminder on page 24 that it’s not too late to start off a few other edible crops, too. Again, simply by growing our own and not buying from shops, we cut our collective carbon footprint and help the planet.

There’s so much going on in the garden right now – planting, deadheading, feeding, mowing... but isn’t it just a joy to be out there? Hopefully the weather’s improving too... have a great gardening week!